When I was a little kid, my sister and I used to stand by the front door every morning, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the mailman. When he finally pulled up to the curb in his little, white truck, we'd rush out the door, pushing the other out of the way, practically ripping each other's hair out, in an attempt to be the lucky one that was handed the mail that day.

My father often intercepted us before we killed each other (and the mailman) in our frenzy, but most of the time one of us managed to get there first. It's not that there was necessarily anything in that pile of stuff for us, (after all we even did this at a stranger's house) but you never knew when there might be that little brown box from the "Dr. Seuss of the Month Club" amongst all those white paper envelopes. The mailman was like an off-season Santa Claus, only he made deliveries every day, which made it well-worth the struggle, and the hair loss, to get to the edge of that sidewalk.

I have to admit that to this day (and I doubt it's just me) I get that little surge of childish excitement, just before I open my mailbox. It's usually full of bills and, of course, junk mail, but there's always that glimmer of hope that I'll find a little blue air-mail envelope from a friend overseas, or a brown box of something I forgot I had ordered. When there's nothing in my mailbox, I feel almost insulted. Is it a holiday? Did my mail deliverer forget me? Are my bills, and my possible-far-away-postcards swimming at the bottom of her big leather bag? Could all my stuff have gotten into the wrong hands? I'd rather get a couple pieces of junk mail than nothing at all. At least I'd know that the mail-person came by and that the U.S. Postal system hadn't collapsed.

I may be the only person in America that reads her junk mail. But maybe there's something in that unlabeled envelope, or colorful newsprint flyer, or coupon booklet, that I otherwise might not have known. Maybe there's something I might actually need amongst all that seemingly useless information. I know there are those that rip up, and throw out, their junk before even giving it a glance, but can they really rest knowing they may have missed an opportunity to buy 3 rolls of toilet paper for less than a dollar? It's because of people like me that we have so much crap in our mailboxes. And now, it's because of people like me, that our e-mail gets spammed with unsolicited paraphernalia from all over the world, and from all walks of life.

Since people have become so glued to their computers at home, and at work, they've begun to treat these techno-boxes of information as personal friends and even extensions of our own brains. They store our work, our finances, our personal lives, our journals, our memories, our games, and our mail. We sit in our homes, or at work, communicating, shopping, and connecting through a machine. For some, the computer is a such a major source of "human" contact that they forget that the machine is plugged into the wall, not into our heads. When the junk mail starts jamming up our boxes we suddenly feel that our personal space is being invaded and we demand to have our privacy back.

All of a sudden we want to put a lock and key on the piece of equipment we use for almost all our public and private business. We want to pick and choose what we deem to be important. Let's hope that the Supreme Court has better things to do than to determine whether privacy rights should apply to our, otherwise very public, hi-tech mailboxes. It's not as though our hard-drives (or brain-extensions) are being broken into. We are simply receiving unsolicited mail, useless or otherwise. Why should our computers be any different than our snail mailboxes?

If we remove junk mail from e-mail then we should remove all the unfavorable billboard ads that line the world's highways, or those stinky perfumed pages that permeate fashion magazines, or those pesky magazine ads that interrupt an interesting article, forcing us to skip 10 pages ahead, while skimming over 10 more annoying sales pitches for pantyhose, cigarettes, and Franklin Mint decorator plates. We should take commercials off TV because we don't want our programs to be interrupted. We should get rid of Special News Bulletins because not everyone wants to listen to Michael Jackson whine about his innocence for 20 minutes, or cares that we have a new President, for that matter. We are a nation that thrives on the spread of information. It's all part of one of the things we do best -- buy and sell. By posting ads, picking up the phone, and via mass-mailings, there's always the hope that at least one poor slob will actually pay attention.

There are enough filter mechanisms to stop unwanted e-mail, and enough spammers that are kind enough to remove your name from a list should you request it, to keep government legislation out of my mailbox. It's a lot easier to halt unsolicited e-mail than it is to stop the U.S. Postal Service from delivering junk. Besides -- every piece of junk e-mail is one less piece of non-biodegradable paper in a land-fill.